On Wednesday, the Division of Homeland Safety printed new details about Cell Fortify, the face recognition app that federal immigration brokers use to determine individuals in the subject, undocumented immigrants and US residents alike. The details, together with the firm behind the app, have been printed as a part of DHS’s 2025 AI Use Case Inventory, which federal businesses are required to launch periodically.
The stock consists of two entries for Cell Fortify—one for Customs and Border Safety (CBP), one other for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)—and says the app is in the “deployment” stage for each. CBP says that Cell Fortify turned “operational” at the starting of Might final yr, whereas ICE received entry to it on Might 20, 2025. That date is a couple of month before 404 Media first reported on the app’s existence.
The stock additionally recognized the app’s vendor as NEC, which had beforehand been unknown publicly. On its web site, NEC advertises a face recognition answer referred to as Reveal, which it says can do one-to-many searches or one-to-one matches towards databases of any measurement. CBP says the app’s vendor is NEC, whereas ICE notes it was developed partially in home. A $23.9 million contract held between NEC and the DHS from 2020 to 2023 states that DHS was utilizing NEC biometric matching merchandise for “limitless facial portions, on limitless {hardware} platforms, and at limitless places.” NEC did not instantly reply to a request for remark.
Each CBP and ICE say that the app is supposed to assist shortly verify individuals’s id, and ICE additional says that it helps achieve this in the subject “when officers and brokers should work with restricted information and entry a number of disparate methods.”
ICE says that the app can seize faces, “contactless” fingerprints, and pictures of id paperwork. The app sends that knowledge to CBP “for submission to authorities biometric matching methods.” These methods then use AI to match individuals’s faces and fingerprints with current data, and return doable matches together with biographic information. ICE says that it additionally extracts textual content from id paperwork for “extra checks.” ICE says it doesn’t personal or work together instantly with the AI fashions, and that these belong to CBP.
CBP says the “Vetting/Border Crossing Info/ Trusted Traveler Info” was used to both practice, fine-tune, or consider the efficiency of Cell Fortify, nevertheless it didn’t specify which, and didn’t reply to a request for clarification from WIRED.
CBP’s Trusted Traveler Programs embrace TSA PreCheck and World Entry. In a declaration earlier this month, a Minnesota girl mentioned her World Entry and TSA PreCheck privileges had been revoked after interacting with a federal agent she was observing who advised her that they had “facial recognition.” In one other declaration for a separate lawsuit, filed by the state of Minnesota, a person who was stopped and detained by federal brokers says an officer advised them, “Whoever is the registered proprietor [of this vehicle] is going to have a enjoyable time attempting to journey after this.”
Whereas CBP says there are “adequate monitoring protocols” in place for the app, ICE says that the growth of monitoring protocols is in progress, and that it’ll determine potential impacts throughout an AI influence evaluation. In accordance to guidance from the Workplace of Administration and Funds, which was issued before the stock says the app was deployed for both CBP or ICE, businesses are supposed to full an AI influence evaluation before deploying any high-impact use case. Each CBP and ICE say the app is “high-impact” and “deployed.”
DHS and ICE did not reply to requests for remark. CBP says it plans to look into WIRED’s inquiry.
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